Dangerprone
by chatoyance
Summary: "Look who's danger prone this time," she said in an attempt to make light of the situation, and Fred half-grinned, half-grimaced. "Rub it in, Daph."


The old shack creaked and groaned, the boards rattling against the windows as if it was warning them to stay away. The front steps had rotted away long ago, and the porch sagged uncomfortably in the middle due to some missing supports, but Fred waved the gang forward silently, his footsteps careful and one hand held out to support Daphne as she stepped carefully onto the front porch.

Velma and Shaggy followed, taking care to step where the others had, but Scooby held back a moment, sniffing the air and whimpering quietly.

"Like, what's wrong Scoob?"

Scooby huffed, shaking his head a little bit, "Something seems bad," he mumbled, "Smells wrong."

"Don't worry about it Scooby, look," Fred stepped on the floorboards, demonstrating their strength, and it creaked treacherously but held fast, "See? It's fine, come on up."

Scooby looked up at him, his eyebrows knotting together and a whine escaping his throat, "Nuh-uh."

"Scooby, honey," Daphne cooed, leaning down closer to the dog, her hands on her knees, "Freddie's right, it's perfectly safe. You know, I think I have some Scooby Snacks in my purse, I'll give you one if you come up."

The great dane seemed to mull things over for a moment, weighing the perils of an abandoned house against the delights of a delicious snack. The dog was ruled by his stomach, however, and he nodded vigorously and licked his chops, carefully stepping onto the creaking boards of the front porch.

"Good boy," Daphne said, scratching Scooby behind his ears and feeding him a snack, his muzzle smacking wetly against her palm. She smiled and wiped her hand on the hem of her dress when Scooby wasn't looking.

The front door was boarded shut, and Fred grabbed the end of one piece of wood and tried to pry it from the doorframe. "Hey Shag, give me a hand, will ya?"

"Sure thing," Shaggy said, and loped over to the door, sidestepping a hole in the floor to stand beside Fred. On three, the two young men pulled forward and the board snapped away from the house, spraying dust and wood particles into the air. Fred tried to open the door, but without any luck. He threw his shoulder against it, and after three tries, the door finally opened.

"That was easy," he said, clapping his hands together and grinning lopsidedly at his companions. Velma shook her head, while Daphne looked amused. Shaggy and Scooby were looking wildly around the entrance, trying to spot any evildoers pre-emptively.

"Alright gang, it's time to split up and look for clues. Daphne, you and I will go upstairs. Velma, Shaggy and Scooby can handle the ground floor, and then we'll all meet up and check out the basement, alright?"

The stairs were covered in years of filth and dust, and various objects were strewn about across the floor without any reason for being there. Daphne took a flashlight out of her purse and flicked the switch, pointing it toward the floor to make certain there weren't any holes in their path. The last thing she needed was a trap door, or for the ground to give way beneath her and drop her to a chamber below.

"Those stairs look sturdy enough," she whispered, "I'll go first."

Fred looked at her, his head cocked to one side, and after a moment of consideration he said, "If that's what you want. I'll be right behind you."

The stairs groaned in protest as the two ascended, hands gripping the railing and shoes landing as lightly as possible, leaving prints behind in the dust. Daphne nearly stumbled once, when one stair sunk an inch under her weight, sending a puff of dust into the air as she swayed backward, but a hand at her waist steadied her.

"Thanks," she said, reaching up to brush her hair behind her ear, taking hold of the railing once again and smiling. Fred nodded, but remained silent, and Daphne turned to climb the remaining stairs.

"Okay, time to look for some clues," Fred whispered, his voice tinged with barely controlled glee. He loved the game, the search for clues that could make or break a case; rummaging through old drawers to find photographs, books and keys, artifacts of lives past. He gestured toward a room at the end of the hallway, its door slightly ajar and with a key in its lock, and the two edged into the room quietly.

Daphne flashed the light around the walls, "Looks like an old office," she said, taking a step forward, "I'll bet this was Mr. Harvey's private study when he was alive."

The old office was littered with papers and old books, stacked in chaotic piles across the desk and spread across the floor. The window was open; leaves having blown in from outside, and the wind caused the drapes to flutter, producing a muffled sound that made Fred snap his head to the left. When he realized what the sound had been, he relaxed. "Daph, bring that light over here, would you?"

Daphne nodded and stepped cautiously over the piles of papers to Fred's side, holding the flashlight over his shoulder as he opened a drawer of the desk. Her other hand rested at his back, a habitual gesture the two would sometimes share.

"Here, look at this. Looks like Mr. Harvey here was friends with Mrs. Leroy back in the day, check out this photo," Fred lifted the photo over his shoulder and Daphne took it with her free hand, illuminating the picture with the flashlight. The photo was black and white, faded and tattered at the edges, depicting a middle aged man with someone who looked much like the woman who had sent them to the old Harvey estate in search of clues. The pair held a small chest of treasures and jewelry between them.

"Looks like Mrs. Leroy _did _know about the old Harvey treasure," Daphne breathed, just loud enough that Fred could hear her words, "But why did she keep that a secret?"

"I don't know, but something tells me she knows more than she let on," Fred said, and snapped the desk drawer shut. He stepped away from Daphne, her hand falling away from him, and turned to the book shelf, "There has to be more here."

He started pulling books from the shelf. He tore them down, flipped through them, grunted in dismay, and replaced them on the shelf sideways while Daphne looked on, keeping the flashlight trained on his back as he ripped through Mr. Harvey's library. There was a moment where Fred thought he had found something, but it had turned out to be an old receipt from a restaurant that had long since closed down. There was a pause during Hurricane Freddie wherein he stopped to read over a pamphlet that had been wedged between two phonebooks, and it was during this silence that Daphne heard the sound of chains being dragged across the dusty floorboards.

"Freddie!" she hissed, and his head snapped up as he dropped the paper. Daphne flicked the flashlight off and was at his side in a flash. Fred instinctively reached out to her, folding her into the crook of his arm as he guided her toward the desk and signaled for her to duck underneath. For a moment she protested wordlessly, knowing that he would try to lure the ghost away, and he hesitated, glancing toward the door and back at Daphne before she pulled him down to the floor roughly. He fell with a dull thud, his knees knocking against her thigh as she pulled him over her, but when he opened his mouth to say something, he heard the chains drag against the doorframe and remained silent.

The ghost entered the room, its shroud brushing along the dusty floor, rustling in the wind from the opened window. It moved slowly around the room, its breathing labored and rusty, and Fred could hear the sound of nails slowly dragging across the surface of the desk above their heads.

It felt like hours. The phantom leaning over them while they lay tangled together under the desk, holding their breath. In the darkness, they could only feel and hear; Daphne's fingers digging into Fred's shoulder, his breath on her neck, and the sound of the phantom's nails scraping across wood. It was only a moment, dragged out to an unbearable length as the phantom slowly circled the desk, and then time sped up again when it leapt over the desk in a blur of chains and white to land on the other side, peering down at the two bodies huddled beneath it.

Daphne bit back a scream and she felt Fred's body tense up as the phantom leered at them, and in a flash it reached out and grabbed his wrist, wrenching his upper body forward and out from under the desk. Momentarily stunned, Fred stared the ghost in the face for a second before yanking his arm out of its grip and pushing the phantom backward, where it stumbled a few paces and fell into a chair. Without thinking, Fred bent to pull Daphne up from the floor, his hand at her back as he guided her toward the door. However, by then the phantom had risen from the chair and had positioned itself between the pair and the doorway.

Fred stood in front of Daphne, her fingers clutching at his arm as they stared the creature down, and it was then that Daphne had remembered the flashlight in her hand. She flashed it into the eyes of the phantom, and it thrashed about, lunging toward the two violently. Daphne dodged the ghost's flailing arms, but one of the fists of the creature came into contact with Fred's nose, and he grunted and stumbled backward a step before the other fist hit him in the side of the head, its fingers splayed open, nails forward. Fred jabbed his elbow into what would have been the beast's ribs, and it came into contact with the solid feeling of flesh and bone, with an added 'oof' from the phantom as it crumpled to the floor. Fred dashed to where Daphne was standing, one hand across his nose, as he watched the phantom jump out the opened window and disappear from view.

Daphne rushed to the window, peering down into the fog, "It's gone. Jeepers, that was a close one." She turned back toward the room, and the small smile that was across her lips faded, "Fred, are you okay?"

Fred shrugged, a short chuckle escaping from underneath his palm, "Uh, I've been better." His hand was concealing the lower part of his face, but Daphne could see a trickle of blood dripping down his chin to land squarely on the knot of his ascot, and her mouth twisted up at one corner as she crossed the room.

He sniffed and tilted his head back as she approached, hoping it would do something to help, but Daphne shook her head and put her hand on his arm, "Here, let me have a look at that." She reached up to his pull his hand away from his face, and with some reluctance, he let his bloodied hand drop to his side, resisting the urge to wipe it on his pantleg.

"Look who's danger prone this time," she said in an attempt to make light of the situation, and Fred half-grinned, half-grimaced.

"Rub it in, Daph," he said, his voice thick due to his bashed nose, and Daphne would have found it comical if she hadn't felt so bad for him.

She smiled at him slightly, "Sorry in advance if this kind of hurts." Her fingers brushed across his nose lightly at first, and then she applied pressure in certain spots until he winced, his clean hand flying up to her wrist instinctively.

"Jeez, Daph!"

"Sorry Freddie," she whispered, taking her hands away from his face, "It doesn't seem to be broken, though, so that's good."

"When did you become a first aid expert?"

"I babysit a lot of kids," Daphne said absently, preoccupied with removing her green scarf from her neck. She managed to untangle it and bunched it up in her palm, lifting it to Fred's face and attempting to wipe the partially dried blood from his chin and neck.

"That's your favourite scarf," Fred breathed, and Daphne shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal, dabbing at his jawline.

"It looks like the phantom scratched you up a little bit, too. The things we do for a mystery, huh?" she said, smirking as she gave his face a final once-over. Her hand brushed against his cheek gently as she studied him, and he held his breath, closing his eyes when her fingers grazed the scratches on his jaw. He opened his eyes when her hands dropped from his face.

"Uh, it's not all bad," Fred chuckled. Daphne noticed he had that weird far-off look in his eyes again, and she smiled slightly, reaching to finger the ascot around his neck.

"It's too bad you ruined your ascot. It was my favourite one."

Fred looked down and took the end of the fabric in his hands. It wasn't really ruined, not like Daphne's scarf. It only had a drop or two on it, and the red managed to blend in with the orange fabric, "Ah, it's not too bad this way though. Adds character. Makes for a good story. I'm sorry about your scarf, though."

Daphne turned the bloodied scarf over in her hands, "Hm. It's okay."

There was a brief silence between the two, and Daphne let go of the scarf, the wind carrying it out the open window and toward the ground.

"Thanks for taking care of me, by the way," Fred said, rubbing his left arm with his hand as a sort of nervous gesture.

"Not a problem," she grinned, "_Someone's_ got to take care of you, Jones."

"Glad it's you," Fred said, his words short, but he smiled. Daphne couldn't help but think that he looked a little bit silly, grinning lopsidedly at her in a cluttered room in the dark, his hair ruffled, and a rapidly darkening bruise on his nose.

But he still looked so damned happy.


End file.
